Gerald Seymour - The Contract

The silence hung in the room. The memories of the briefings at Holmbury turned in Johnny's mind. Stand your ground, they'd said.

Don't debate and don't argue. Let the blood ties gnaw at him.

'You must decide where your affections lie. It may be many years in your life since you have had the Opportunity to choose your own future.

You have that chance now. The choice lies in whom you betray. It may be Defence Ministry in Moscow,' it may be your son who will be at Helmstedt tonight.'

Not bad, Johnny. Smithson would have enjoyed that. Otto Guttmann had turned back to the window and the grey cloud basket.

'What is your name?'

Johnny swung round to face Erica Guttmann, pirouetted on his toes. 'It's Johnny.'

'You ask much of us, Johnny,' she said. 'We have a security here, of a sort… You ask us to go blindfold after you.'

'Yes.'

'It is a crude bait that you offer.'

'Yes.'

'This car, it will really come?' She was urging the confirmation from him.

' I promise that the car will come.'

'What is the danger to him?'

'We are careful people, Miss Guttmann. There is no danger.'

'He loved Willi,' she spoke as if her father were no longer in the room. '

I think he loved him more than he loved my mother… there is no risk to him?'

It was Erica who they had said at Holmbury he would have to claw his way past to get to the side of the old man, and Johnny saw only sweetness and worry and the tumbling in her mind on the decision that would be hers to make.

'There is no risk…'

' I will talk to him.'

'Yes.'

'You will come again, later.'

'Yes.'

'When will you come?'

'You have all the hours of daylight to talk. All the day. By evening you must be clear on your intentions. There is no argument after that. If you accept then you follow me without question.' A half smile, a little chuckle came to Johnny. 'You should come, Miss Guttmann, ride the wind beyond the fence. Willi is waiting there and a great horizon… don't turn your back on it, don't choose this bloody drab heap.'

'Come again in the afternoon.'

'You should not talk of this… if you were to go to the police, if anything were to happen to me then it would go badly for Willi, that's obvious, isn't it?'

She looked at him without anger, without surprise, showed only a smear of disappointment. 'Are the threat and the bribe the only words of your language?'

Johnny walked past her and closed the door quietly behind him.

Sitting by the window in the breakfast room at the Stettiner Hof Henry Carter planned his day. There were only a few courses open to him. He thought that he'd buy a shirt down in the old quarter, on the Neumarker Strasse. He thought he'd wander up to the NAAFI Roadhaus and have a lunch of something and chips and a botde of beer. He thought he'd have a siesta before the evening vigil at Checkpoint Alpha. At least by the evening he'd have company. Pierce and George and Willi had gone through to Hannover on the military train, they'd spent the night in the close security of the British army camp at Paderborn. Pierce had telephoned to report that Willi's behaviour on the train had been faultless. They would all come back to Helmstedt for the end of the run.

A treat for Willi, and he'd earned it. Carter thought that it might be time for him to talk with the boy about the girl Lizzie in Geneva, put the record straight, and it would be the right occasion because the boy would have his head stuffed with the reunion with his father and sister.

It was a subdued, close morning in Helmstedt. Carter hoped the sun would have broken through before he started the trail up to the Roadhaus.

They ran towards each other across the wide, white pavings of Alexander Platz, sprinting, racing to be together.

Ulf and Jutte beneath the mountain of the 'Stadt Berlin' Inter Hotel.

Hands around each other's necks, fingers deep into each other's hair, lips pressed against each other's cheeks. With the world to watch, with the stores calling the Saturday shoppers, with the square crowded with tourists and visitors, she hugged against him, squirmed herself close to him. No words, no talk, only holding, only kissing. It was a warm morning and he felt the roughness of her heavy sweater and the waterproof anorak hung from her elbow. If she had worn the clothes that he had asked for then she would have the rail tickets tight in the pocket at the waist of her trousers.

Instinctively he led, his arm around her shoulder, towards the S-Bahn station on Alexander Platz.

Jutte had told her father and mother that she was camping for the weekend. She had made her farewells short and cheerful and temporary, pecked at the cheek of her father, squeezed the' hand of her mother.. she had not thought whether she would see or hear of them again.

Ulf had survived the annoyance of his father that within hours of his demobilisation he should need to take a weekend with the FDJ out of Berlin. His mother had sat in the kitchen while the father and boy had conducted their whispered argument in the hallway.

He wondered how soon they would hear of his escape. Within a day perhaps, not more than two, after the crossing. The little room where they spent their evenings in front of the television and the electric fire would be crowded with the men of the Schutzpolizei. Submission from his father, terror from his mother, and they never in trouble before. And when his father professed his surprise, astonishment at the action of his son, would the policemen believe him? And if they did not believe him..? Emotion trapped in Ulf s throat, tears caught in his eyes. He did not want to harm them, not his father or mother. They had done nothing to deserve the retribution of the Party.

Jutte's forehead nuzzled against his chin. 'You have found the place?'

'There is a place where it can be done.'

'Where we can cross?'

'Where it's possible, yes.'

' I will not be frightened, not with you.'

For more than 3 hours Otto Guttmann had sat in the small sitting room in the cottage of the pastor beside the Dom. He had come alone, and Erica had gone to walk in the Pionier-park and had said that she would support his decision, she would follow his choice. The burden was on his back, laid at his door, and one friend to turn to.

Otto Guttmann told the pastor of his work at Padolsk. He went over in detail the events as he had known them surrounding the drowning of his son. He had relived the visit to Wernigerode and the passing of the photographs which he showed to his friend. He talked in a voice stumbling with pain of the sight of Willi from the footbridge over the railway. He recalled the words of the Englishman who had come to his hotel room.

What should he do? he asked. Where lay his loyalty?

The pastor had not interrupted. Only after the housekeeper had carried in on a tray a plate of cold meats and a pot of tea was the monologue exhausted.

He was a small spare man, the pastor. The gestures of his hands as he spoke were quick, decisive. His voice was lulling, persuasive. He had known humiliation and rejection, he had worked all his adult life in the community of Magdeburg. He showed no surprise that his friend had visited him, only an acceptance of the enormity of the option. The words he used were thoughtfully chosen.

'You are a scientist, Otto, a manufacturer of terrible weapons of warfare. I am a pacifist, I have been so ever since the bombers came to our city and 16,000 persons were slaughtered in the holocaust and the firestorm. If you stand before me as a scientist and ask me where your duties lie, then I cannot help you, I offer no advice.'

The cup in Otto Guttmann's hand trembled, tea slopped to his trouser leg.

'… But you are, too, a Christian, you are a believer, and there we are joined. As a Christian your blood runs as freely as mine, as if we were brothers. We know what it is to worship alone, we have the comradeship that comes from the mocking of an atheist society, we have suffered the nobility of hardship for our beliefs. In this country it is an act of courage to attend public worship. You remember when the pastor from Zeitz, you remember the name of Brusewitz, you remember when he immolated himself on the steps of his church, poured petrol over himself and took a match, to draw attention to the harassment of young Christians in our society, you remember him? They called him an idiot and said that he was deranged. And after his death, we who were his fellow Christians, we debated amongst ourselves as to whether we had compromised too far with the Party. To me, Brusewitz is as near a saint as we will find in our time in this place. He made the supreme sacrifice in the flames, the sacrifice of Christ. His example was one of heroic faith, and his death demands that we of the church must stay and fight for his ideals, we cannot abandon our people. I speak as a cleric. I could not go, my fight is here.'